Unified Application Notification Framework

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems for a unified application notification framework are described herein. A server may receive a notification from a service provider. The service provider may be associated with an application executable on a virtual machine. The virtual machine may be part of a virtual environment that includes a user interface. The server may determine an identifier for the received notification. The identifier may indicate the application on the virtual machine associated with the service provider. The server may provide the received notification to the user interface for display to a user. The received notification may be displayed without execution of the application on the virtual machine.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of U.S. application Ser. No.16/448,569, filed Jun. 21, 2019, which claims priority to ApplicationNo. PCT/CN2019/080850, filed Apr. 1, 2019, which are hereby incorporatedby reference in their entireties.

FIELD

Aspects described herein generally relate to computer networking, remotecomputer access, virtualization, enterprise mobility management, andhardware and software related thereto. More specifically, aspectsdescribed herein relate to a notification framework for virtualapplications.

BACKGROUND

Current virtual desktop and application products are typically composedof a frontend through which users can interact with virtualapplications, and a backend that manages the virtual resources andinstances. Applications may receive messages from backend services andgenerate notifications for the user.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary of various aspects describedherein. This summary is not an extensive overview, and is not intendedto identify required or critical elements or to delineate the scope ofthe claims. The following summary merely presents some concepts in asimplified form as an introductory prelude to the more detaileddescription provided below.

The unified application notification framework may receive anotification associated with a virtual application instance, via anotification application programming interface (API), operatingsystem-level interception, and service-to-service notification channel.The notification may be triaged and filtered.

The notification API notification may be received from the virtualapplication instance through an API call native to the unifiedapplication notification framework. The operating system-levelnotification interception message may be generated based on a virtualnotification sent by the virtual application instance to a virtualoperating system instance, on which the virtual application instance isexecuting. The service-to-service notification may be generated by abackend service that services the virtual application instance.

The unified application notification framework may send the notificationto the client workspace.

These and additional aspects will be appreciated with the benefit of thedisclosures discussed in further detail below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A more complete understanding of aspects described herein and theadvantages thereof may be acquired by referring to the followingdescription in consideration of the accompanying drawings, in which likereference numbers indicate like features, and wherein:

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative computer system architecture that may beused in accordance with one or more illustrative aspects describedherein;

FIG. 2 depicts an illustrative remote-access system architecture thatmay be used in accordance with one or more illustrative aspectsdescribed herein;

FIG. 3 depicts an illustrative virtualized system architecture that maybe used in accordance with one or more illustrative aspects describedherein;

FIG. 4 depicts an illustrative cloud-based system architecture that maybe used in accordance with one or more illustrative aspects describedherein;

FIG. 5 depicts an illustrative unified application notificationframework;

FIG. 6 depicts an illustrative user interface for a client device;

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrative method for providing a unifiedapplication notification framework; and

FIG. 8 depicts an illustrative method for receiving a notification by aclient workspace.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description of the various embodiments, reference ismade to the accompanying drawings identified above and which form a parthereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration various embodimentsin which aspects described herein may be practiced. It is to beunderstood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural andfunctional modifications may be made without departing from the scopedescribed herein. Various aspects are capable of other embodiments andof being practiced or being carried out in various different ways.

Conventional cloud products lack a reliable notification mechanismbetween the backend application instances and the frontend userinterface. For example, a backend application instance may be aMicrosoft Outlook® email client application running in a virtualWindows® desktop environment. The frontend user interface may be CitrixWorkspace®. The backend application instances typically have no way ofalerting the frontend user interface directly, and thus when anapplication issues a notification, the user may not be notified untilshe spontaneously opens that application. For example, if the user wereto receive an email message via an email client running on a hostoperating system of the local computer, the email client may send anotification message to the host operating system running on the localcomputer and the user may be instantly alerted with the notification.However, if the email message arrives at a virtual instance of an emailclient running on a virtual machine, the host operating system runningon the local computer may have no way of knowing that the new email hasarrived, and the user may not discover the arrival of the new emailuntil she actively launches a virtual desktop user interface to accessthe virtual machine and/or launches the virtual instance of the emailclient. Thus, a reliable notification framework in virtualizationenvironments is needed to improve the user experience.

To overcome limitations in the prior art described above, and toovercome other limitations that will be apparent upon reading andunderstanding the present specification, aspects described herein aredirected towards a unified application notification framework.

As a general introduction to the subject matter described in more detailbelow, aspects described herein are related to a unified notificationframework for cloud and/or virtualized applications. Users may receivenotifications without having to open virtualized or cloud applicationsto check each individually for notifications, thus improving the userexperience and customer satisfaction. More specifically, the presentdisclosure allows a frontend user interface to receive notificationmessages related to a backend application instance via a unifiedapplication notification framework and through one of multiplecommunication channels. Thus, the user may receive pertinent informationabout the backend application instance more quickly and more efficientlybecause the information is made more readily available to the user.

It is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology used hereinare for the purpose of description and should not be regarded aslimiting. Rather, the phrases and terms used herein are to be giventheir broadest interpretation and meaning. The use of “including” and“comprising” and variations thereof is meant to encompass the itemslisted thereafter and equivalents thereof as well as additional itemsand equivalents thereof. The use of the terms “connected,” “coupled,”“engaged” and similar terms, is meant to include both direct andindirect connecting, coupling, and engaging.

As used herein and depicted in the drawings, the term “notification”(also referred to as a message or a notification message) refers to anytype of data or information that is generated by an application oroperating system and contains a message for the same or otherapplications and operating systems. A notification is often relativelysmall in size (e.g., a few bytes to a few kilobytes) although there isno limit to its size. The sender and the receiver of a notificationmessage may need to agree beforehand on the format and delivery methodof the message. The recipient of the notification may further processthe notification by presenting relevant information to the user. Forinstance, the notification may be presented to a user visually on ascreen (e.g., a text, an icon, a pop-up, a dialog box, a status bar, atoast, a tile, a badge, an alert, a counter, etc.), audibly through aspeaker (e.g., an alarm, a ringtone, an audio alert, etc.), or throughany other means (e.g., vibration, haptic feedback, etc.). As an example,an email client, upon receiving a new email, may send a notification tothe operating system on which the email client is executing such thatthe operating system may alert the user about the new email via a pop-updialog.

The received notification may be “cleared” or otherwise removed from theapplication or system once the user manually acknowledges (e.g., reads)the notification or automatically cleared after the notification ispresented to the user. Alternatively, a notification may be clearedafter a certain amount of time (e.g., 1 hour, 1 day, 2 weeks, 3 months,etc.) elapses after the receipt of the notification. Cleared (orexpired) notification may no longer be presented to the user.

Computing Architecture

Computer software, hardware, and networks may be utilized in a varietyof different system environments, including standalone, networked,remote-access (also known as remote desktop), virtualized, and/orcloud-based environments, among others. FIG. 1 illustrates one exampleof a system architecture and data processing device that may be used toimplement one or more illustrative aspects described herein in astandalone and/or networked environment. Various network nodes 103, 105,107, and 109 may be interconnected via a wide area network (WAN) 101,such as the Internet. Other networks may also or alternatively be used,including private intranets, corporate networks, local area networks(LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN), wireless networks, personalnetworks (PAN), and the like. Network 101 is for illustration purposesand may be replaced with fewer or additional computer networks. A localarea network 133 may have one or more of any known LAN topology and mayuse one or more of a variety of different protocols, such as Ethernet.Devices 103, 105, 107, and 109 and other devices (not shown) may beconnected to one or more of the networks via twisted pair wires, coaxialcable, fiber optics, radio waves, or other communication media.

The term “network” as used herein and depicted in the drawings refersnot only to systems in which remote storage devices are coupled togethervia one or more communication paths, but also to stand-alone devicesthat may be coupled, from time to time, to such systems that havestorage capability. Consequently, the term “network” includes not only a“physical network” but also a “content network,” which is comprised ofthe data—attributable to a single entity—which resides across allphysical networks.

The components may include data server 103, web server 105, and clientcomputers 107, 109. Data server 103 provides overall access, control andadministration of databases and control software for performing one ormore illustrative aspects describe herein. Data server 103 may beconnected to web server 105 through which users interact with and obtaindata as requested. Alternatively, data server 103 may act as a webserver itself and be directly connected to the Internet. Data server 103may be connected to web server 105 through the local area network 133,the wide area network 101 (e.g., the Internet), via direct or indirectconnection, or via some other network. Users may interact with the dataserver 103 using remote computers 107, 109, e.g., using a web browser toconnect to the data server 103 via one or more externally exposed websites hosted by web server 105. Client computers 107, 109 may be used inconcert with data server 103 to access data stored therein, or may beused for other purposes. For example, from client device 107 a user mayaccess web server 105 using an Internet browser, as is known in the art,or by executing a software application that communicates with web server105 and/or data server 103 over a computer network (such as theInternet).

Servers and applications may be combined on the same physical machines,and retain separate virtual or logical addresses, or may reside onseparate physical machines. FIG. 1 illustrates just one example of anetwork architecture that may be used, and those of skill in the artwill appreciate that the specific network architecture and dataprocessing devices used may vary, and are secondary to the functionalitythat they provide, as further described herein. For example, servicesprovided by web server 105 and data server 103 may be combined on asingle server.

Each component 103, 105, 107, 109 may be any type of known computer,server, or data processing device. Data server 103, e.g., may include aprocessor 111 controlling overall operation of the data server 103. Dataserver 103 may further include random access memory (RAM) 113, read onlymemory (ROM) 115, network interface 117, input/output interfaces 119(e.g., keyboard, mouse, display, printer, etc.), and memory 121.Input/output (I/O) 119 may include a variety of interface units anddrives for reading, writing, displaying, and/or printing data or files.Memory 121 may further store operating system software 123 forcontrolling overall operation of the data processing device 103, controllogic 125 for instructing data server 103 to perform aspects describedherein, and other application software 127 providing secondary, support,and/or other functionality which may or might not be used in conjunctionwith aspects described herein. The control logic 125 may also bereferred to herein as the data server software 125. Functionality of thedata server software 125 may refer to operations or decisions madeautomatically based on rules coded into the control logic 125, mademanually by a user providing input into the system, and/or a combinationof automatic processing based on user input (e.g., queries, dataupdates, etc.).

Memory 121 may also store data used in performance of one or moreaspects described herein, including a first database 129 and a seconddatabase 131. In some embodiments, the first database 129 may includethe second database 131 (e.g., as a separate table, report, etc.). Thatis, the information can be stored in a single database, or separatedinto different logical, virtual, or physical databases, depending onsystem design. Devices 105, 107, and 109 may have similar or differentarchitecture as described with respect to device 103. Those of skill inthe art will appreciate that the functionality of data processing device103 (or device 105, 107, or 109) as described herein may be spreadacross multiple data processing devices, for example, to distributeprocessing load across multiple computers, to segregate transactionsbased on geographic location, user access level, quality of service(QoS), etc.

One or more aspects may be embodied in computer-usable or readable dataand/or computer-executable instructions, such as in one or more programmodules, executed by one or more computers or other devices as describedherein. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects,components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks orimplement particular abstract data types when executed by a processor ina computer or other device. The modules may be written in a source codeprogramming language that is subsequently compiled for execution, or maybe written in a scripting language such as (but not limited to)HyperText Markup Language (HTML) or Extensible Markup Language (XML).The computer executable instructions may be stored on a computerreadable medium such as a nonvolatile storage device. Any suitablecomputer readable storage media may be utilized, including hard disks,CD-ROMs, optical storage devices, magnetic storage devices, and/or anycombination thereof. In addition, various transmission (non-storage)media representing data or events as described herein may be transferredbetween a source and a destination in the form of electromagnetic wavestraveling through signal-conducting media such as metal wires, opticalfibers, and/or wireless transmission media (e.g., air and/or space).Various aspects described herein may be embodied as a method, a dataprocessing system, or a computer program product. Therefore, variousfunctionalities may be embodied in whole or in part in software,firmware, and/or hardware or hardware equivalents such as integratedcircuits, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), and the like.Particular data structures may be used to more effectively implement oneor more aspects described herein, and such data structures arecontemplated within the scope of computer executable instructions andcomputer-usable data described herein.

With further reference to FIG. 2, one or more aspects described hereinmay be implemented in a remote-access environment. FIG. 2 depicts anexample system architecture including a computing device 201 in anillustrative computing environment 200 that may be used according to oneor more illustrative aspects described herein. Computing device 201 maybe used as a server 206 a in a single-server or multi-server desktopvirtualization system (e.g., a remote access or cloud system) and can beconfigured to provide virtual machines for client access devices. Thecomputing device 201 may have a processor 203 for controlling overalloperation of the device 201 and its associated components, including RAM205, ROM 207, Input/Output (I/O) module 209, and memory 215.

I/O module 209 may include a mouse, keypad, touch screen, scanner,optical reader, and/or stylus (or other input device(s)) through which auser of computing device 201 may provide input, and may also include oneor more of a speaker for providing audio output and one or more of avideo display device for providing textual, audiovisual, and/orgraphical output. Software may be stored within memory 215 and/or otherstorage to provide instructions to processor 203 for configuringcomputing device 201 into a special purpose computing device in order toperform various functions as described herein. For example, memory 215may store software used by the computing device 201, such as anoperating system 217, application programs 219, and an associateddatabase 221.

Computing device 201 may operate in a networked environment supportingconnections to one or more remote computers, such as terminals 240 (alsoreferred to as client devices and/or client machines). The terminals 240may be personal computers, mobile devices, laptop computers, tablets, orservers that include many or all of the elements described above withrespect to the computing device 103 or 201. The network connectionsdepicted in FIG. 2 include a local area network (LAN) 225 and a widearea network (WAN) 229, but may also include other networks. When usedin a LAN networking environment, computing device 201 may be connectedto the LAN 225 through a network interface or adapter 223. When used ina WAN networking environment, computing device 201 may include a modemor other wide area network interface 227 for establishing communicationsover the WAN 229, such as computer network 230 (e.g., the Internet). Itwill be appreciated that the network connections shown are illustrativeand other means of establishing a communications link between thecomputers may be used. Computing device 201 and/or terminals 240 mayalso be mobile terminals (e.g., mobile phones, smartphones, personaldigital assistants (PDAs), notebooks, etc.) including various othercomponents, such as a battery, speaker, and antennas (not shown).

Aspects described herein may also be operational with numerous othergeneral purpose or special purpose computing system environments orconfigurations. Examples of other computing systems, environments,and/or configurations that may be suitable for use with aspectsdescribed herein include, but are not limited to, personal computers,server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems,microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes, programmable consumerelectronics, network personal computers (PCs), minicomputers, mainframecomputers, distributed computing environments that include any of theabove systems or devices, and the like.

As shown in FIG. 2, one or more client devices 240 may be incommunication with one or more servers 206 a-206 n (generally referredto herein as “server(s) 206”). In one embodiment, the computingenvironment 200 may include a network appliance installed between theserver(s) 206 and client machine(s) 240. The network appliance maymanage client/server connections, and in some cases can load balanceclient connections amongst a plurality of backend servers 206.

The client machine(s) 240 may in some embodiments be referred to as asingle client machine 240 or a single group of client machines 240,while server(s) 206 may be referred to as a single server 206 or asingle group of servers 206. In one embodiment a single client machine240 communicates with more than one server 206, while in anotherembodiment a single server 206 communicates with more than one clientmachine 240. In yet another embodiment, a single client machine 240communicates with a single server 206.

A client machine 240 can, in some embodiments, be referenced by any oneof the following non-exhaustive terms: client machine(s); client(s);client computer(s); client device(s); client computing device(s); localmachine; remote machine; client node(s); endpoint(s); or endpointnode(s). The server 206, in some embodiments, may be referenced by anyone of the following non-exhaustive terms: server(s), local machine;remote machine; server farm(s), or host computing device(s).

In one embodiment, the client machine 240 may be a virtual machine. Thevirtual machine may be any virtual machine, while in some embodimentsthe virtual machine may be any virtual machine managed by a Type 1 orType 2 hypervisor, for example, a hypervisor developed by CitrixSystems, IBM, VMware, or any other hypervisor. In some aspects, thevirtual machine may be managed by a hypervisor, while in other aspectsthe virtual machine may be managed by a hypervisor executing on a server206 or a hypervisor executing on a client 240.

Some embodiments include a client device 240 that displays applicationoutput generated by an application remotely executing on a server 206 orother remotely located machine. In these embodiments, the client device240 may execute a virtual machine receiver program or application todisplay the output in an application window, a browser, or other outputwindow. In one example, the application is a desktop, while in otherexamples the application is an application that generates or presents adesktop. A desktop may include a graphical shell providing a userinterface for an instance of an operating system in which local and/orremote applications can be integrated. Applications, as used herein, areprograms that execute after an instance of an operating system (and,optionally, also the desktop) has been loaded.

The server 206, in some embodiments, uses a remote presentation protocolor other program to send data to a thin-client or remote-displayapplication executing on the client to present display output generatedby an application executing on the server 206. The thin-client orremote-display protocol can be any one of the following non-exhaustivelist of protocols: the Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocoldeveloped by Citrix Systems, Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; or the RemoteDesktop Protocol (RDP) manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation ofRedmond, Wash.

A remote computing environment may include more than one server 206a-206 n such that the servers 206 a-206 n are logically grouped togetherinto a server farm 206, for example, in a cloud computing environment.The server farm 206 may include servers 206 that are geographicallydispersed while logically grouped together, or servers 206 that arelocated proximate to each other while logically grouped together.Geographically dispersed servers 206 a-206 n within a server farm 206can, in some embodiments, communicate using a WAN (wide), MAN(metropolitan), or LAN (local), where different geographic regions canbe characterized as: different continents; different regions of acontinent; different countries; different states; different cities;different campuses; different rooms; or any combination of the precedinggeographical locations. In some embodiments the server farm 206 may beadministered as a single entity, while in other embodiments the serverfarm 206 can include multiple server farms.

In some embodiments, a server farm may include servers 206 that executea substantially similar type of operating system platform (e.g.,WINDOWS, UNIX, LINUX, iOS, ANDROID, SYMBIAN, etc.) In other embodiments,server farm 206 may include a first group of one or more servers thatexecute a first type of operating system platform, and a second group ofone or more servers that execute a second type of operating systemplatform.

Server 206 may be configured as any type of server, as needed, e.g., afile server, an application server, a web server, a proxy server, anappliance, a network appliance, a gateway, an application gateway, agateway server, a virtualization server, a deployment server, a SecureSockets Layer (SSL) VPN server, a firewall, a web server, an applicationserver or as a master application server, a server executing an activedirectory, or a server executing an application acceleration programthat provides firewall functionality, application functionality, or loadbalancing functionality. Other server types may also be used.

Some embodiments include a first server 206 a that receives requestsfrom a client machine 240, forwards the request to a second server 206 b(not shown), and responds to the request generated by the client machine240 with a response from the second server 206 b (not shown). Firstserver 206 a may acquire an enumeration of applications available to theclient machine 240 as well as address information associated with anapplication server 206 hosting an application identified within theenumeration of applications. First server 206 a can then present aresponse to the client's request using a web interface, and communicatedirectly with the client 240 to provide the client 240 with access to anidentified application. One or more clients 240 and/or one or moreservers 206 may transmit data over network 230, e.g., network 101.

FIG. 3 shows a high-level architecture of an illustrative desktopvirtualization system. As shown, the desktop virtualization system maybe single-server or multi-server system, or cloud system, including atleast one virtualization server 301 configured to provide virtualdesktops and/or virtual applications to one or more client accessdevices 240. As used herein, a desktop refers to a graphical environmentor space in which one or more applications may be hosted and/orexecuted. A desktop may include a graphical shell providing a userinterface for an instance of an operating system in which local and/orremote applications can be integrated. Applications may include programsthat execute after an instance of an operating system (and, optionally,also the desktop) has been loaded. Each instance of the operating systemmay be physical (e.g., one operating system per device) or virtual (e g, many instances of an OS running on a single device). Each applicationmay be executed on a local device, or executed on a remotely locateddevice (e.g., remoted).

A computer device 301 may be configured as a virtualization server in avirtualization environment, for example, a single-server, multi-server,or cloud computing environment. Virtualization server 301 illustrated inFIG. 3 can be deployed as and/or implemented by one or more embodimentsof the server 206 illustrated in FIG. 2 or by other known computingdevices. Included in virtualization server 301 is a hardware layer thatcan include one or more physical disks 304, one or more physical devices306, one or more physical processors 308, and one or more physicalmemories 316. In some embodiments, firmware 312 can be stored within amemory element in the physical memory 316 and can be executed by one ormore of the physical processors 308. Virtualization server 301 mayfurther include an operating system 314 that may be stored in a memoryelement in the physical memory 316 and executed by one or more of thephysical processors 308. Still further, a hypervisor 302 may be storedin a memory element in the physical memory 316 and can be executed byone or more of the physical processors 308.

Executing on one or more of the physical processors 308 may be one ormore virtual machines 332A-C (generally 332). Each virtual machine 332may have a virtual disk 326A-C and a virtual processor 328A-C. In someembodiments, a first virtual machine 332A may execute, using a virtualprocessor 328A, a control program 320 that includes a tools stack 324.Control program 320 may be referred to as a control virtual machine,Dom0, Domain 0, or other virtual machine used for system administrationand/or control. In some embodiments, one or more virtual machines 332B-Ccan execute, using a virtual processor 328B-C, a guest operating system330A-B (generally 330).

Virtualization server 301 may include a hardware layer 310 with one ormore pieces of hardware that communicate with the virtualization server301. In some embodiments, the hardware layer 310 can include one or morephysical disks 304, one or more physical devices 306, one or morephysical processors 308, and one or more physical memory 316. Physicalcomponents 304, 306, 308, and 316 may include, for example, any of thecomponents described above. Physical devices 306 may include, forexample, a network interface card, a video card, a keyboard, a mouse, aninput device, a monitor, a display device, speakers, an optical drive, astorage device, a universal serial bus connection, a printer, a scanner,a network element (e.g., router, firewall, network address translator,load balancer, virtual private network (VPN) gateway, Dynamic HostConfiguration Protocol (DHCP) router, etc.), or any device connected toor communicating with virtualization server 301. Physical memory 316 inthe hardware layer 310 may include any type of memory. Physical memory316 may store data, and in some embodiments may store one or moreprograms, or set of executable instructions. FIG. 3 illustrates anembodiment where firmware 312 is stored within the physical memory 316of virtualization server 301. Programs or executable instructions storedin the physical memory 316 can be executed by the one or more processors308 of virtualization server 301.

Virtualization server 301 may also include a hypervisor 302. In someembodiments, hypervisor 302 may be a program executed by processors 308on virtualization server 301 to create and manage any number of virtualmachines 332. Hypervisor 302 may be referred to as a virtual machinemonitor, or platform virtualization software. In some embodiments,hypervisor 302 can be any combination of executable instructions and/orhardware that monitors virtual machines executing on a computingmachine. Hypervisor 302 may be Type 2 hypervisor, where the hypervisorexecutes within an operating system 314 executing on the virtualizationserver 301. Virtual machines may then execute at a level above thehypervisor 302. In some embodiments, the Type 2 hypervisor may executewithin the context of a user's operating system such that the Type 2hypervisor interacts with the user's operating system. In otherembodiments, one or more virtualization servers 301 in a virtualizationenvironment may instead include a Type 1 hypervisor (not shown). A Type1 hypervisor may execute on the virtualization server 301 by directlyaccessing the hardware and resources within the hardware layer 310. Thatis, while a Type 2 hypervisor 302 accesses system resources through ahost operating system 314, as shown, a Type 1 hypervisor may directlyaccess all system resources without the host operating system 314. AType 1 hypervisor may execute directly on one or more physicalprocessors 308 of virtualization server 301, and may include programdata stored in the physical memory 316.

Hypervisor 302, in some embodiments, can provide virtual resources tooperating systems 330 or control programs 320 executing on virtualmachines 332 in any manner that simulates the operating systems 330 orcontrol programs 320 having direct access to system resources. Systemresources can include, but are not limited to, physical devices 306,physical disks 304, physical processors 308, physical memory 316, andany other component included in hardware layer 310 of the virtualizationserver 301. Hypervisor 302 may be used to emulate virtual hardware,partition physical hardware, virtualize physical hardware, and/orexecute virtual machines that provide access to computing environments.In still other embodiments, hypervisor 302 may control processorscheduling and memory partitioning for a virtual machine 332 executingon virtualization server 301. Hypervisor 302 may include thosemanufactured by VMWare, Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif.; the XENPROJECThypervisor, an open source product whose development is overseen by theopen source XenProject.org community; HyperV, VirtualServer or virtualPC hypervisors provided by Microsoft, or others. In some embodiments,virtualization server 301 may execute a hypervisor 302 that creates avirtual machine platform on which guest operating systems may execute.In these embodiments, the virtualization server 301 may be referred toas a host server. An example of such a virtualization server is theCitrix Hypervisor provided by Citrix Systems, Inc., of Fort Lauderdale,Fla.

Hypervisor 302 may create one or more virtual machines 332B-C (generally332) in which guest operating systems 330 execute. In some embodiments,hypervisor 302 may load a virtual machine image to create a virtualmachine 332. In other embodiments, the hypervisor 302 may execute aguest operating system 330 within virtual machine 332. In still otherembodiments, virtual machine 332 may execute guest operating system 330.

In addition to creating virtual machines 332, hypervisor 302 may controlthe execution of at least one virtual machine 332. In other embodiments,hypervisor 302 may present at least one virtual machine 332 with anabstraction of at least one hardware resource provided by thevirtualization server 301 (e.g., any hardware resource available withinthe hardware layer 310). In other embodiments, hypervisor 302 maycontrol the manner in which virtual machines 332 access physicalprocessors 308 available in virtualization server 301. Controllingaccess to physical processors 308 may include determining whether avirtual machine 332 should have access to a processor 308, and howphysical processor capabilities are presented to the virtual machine332.

As shown in FIG. 3, virtualization server 301 may host or execute one ormore virtual machines 332. A virtual machine 332 is a set of executableinstructions that, when executed by a processor 308, may imitate theoperation of a physical computer such that the virtual machine 332 canexecute programs and processes much like a physical computing device.While FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment where a virtualization server 301hosts three virtual machines 332, in other embodiments virtualizationserver 301 can host any number of virtual machines 332. Hypervisor 302,in some embodiments, may provide each virtual machine 332 with a uniquevirtual view of the physical hardware, memory, processor, and othersystem resources available to that virtual machine 332. In someembodiments, the unique virtual view can be based on one or more ofvirtual machine permissions, application of a policy engine to one ormore virtual machine identifiers, a user accessing a virtual machine,the applications executing on a virtual machine, networks accessed by avirtual machine, or any other desired criteria. For instance, hypervisor302 may create one or more unsecure virtual machines 332 and one or moresecure virtual machines 332. Unsecure virtual machines 332 may beprevented from accessing resources, hardware, memory locations, andprograms that secure virtual machines 332 may be permitted to access. Inother embodiments, hypervisor 302 may provide each virtual machine 332with a substantially similar virtual view of the physical hardware,memory, processor, and other system resources available to the virtualmachines 332.

Each virtual machine 332 may include a virtual disk 326A-C (generally326) and a virtual processor 328A-C (generally 328.) The virtual disk326, in some embodiments, is a virtualized view of one or more physicaldisks 304 of the virtualization server 301, or a portion of one or morephysical disks 304 of the virtualization server 301. The virtualizedview of the physical disks 304 can be generated, provided, and managedby the hypervisor 302. In some embodiments, hypervisor 302 provides eachvirtual machine 332 with a unique view of the physical disks 304. Thus,in these embodiments, the particular virtual disk 326 included in eachvirtual machine 332 can be unique when compared with the other virtualdisks 326.

A virtual processor 328 can be a virtualized view of one or morephysical processors 308 of the virtualization server 301. In someembodiments, the virtualized view of the physical processors 308 can begenerated, provided, and managed by hypervisor 302. In some embodiments,virtual processor 328 has substantially all of the same characteristicsof at least one physical processor 308. In other embodiments, virtualprocessor 308 provides a modified view of physical processors 308 suchthat at least some of the characteristics of the virtual processor 328are different than the characteristics of the corresponding physicalprocessor 308.

With further reference to FIG. 4, some aspects described herein may beimplemented in a cloud-based environment. FIG. 4 illustrates an exampleof a cloud computing environment (or cloud system) 400. As seen in FIG.4, client computers 411-414 may communicate with a cloud managementserver 410 to access the computing resources (e.g., host servers 403a-403 b (generally referred herein as “host servers 403”), storageresources 404 a-404 b (generally referred herein as “storage resources404”), and network elements 405 a-405 b (generally referred herein as“network resources 405”)) of the cloud system.

Management server 410 may be implemented on one or more physicalservers. The management server 410 may run, for example, CitrixWorkspace by Citrix Systems, Inc. of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., or OpenStack,among others. Management server 410 may manage various computingresources, including cloud hardware and software resources, for example,host computers 403, data storage devices 404, and networking devices405. The cloud hardware and software resources may include privateand/or public components. For example, a cloud may be configured as aprivate cloud to be used by one or more particular customers or clientcomputers 411-414 and/or over a private network. In other embodiments,public clouds or hybrid public-private clouds may be used by othercustomers over an open or hybrid networks.

Management server 410 may be configured to provide user interfacesthrough which cloud operators and cloud customers may interact with thecloud system 400. For example, the management server 410 may provide aset of application programming interfaces (APIs) and/or one or morecloud operator console applications (e.g., web-based or standaloneapplications) with user interfaces to allow cloud operators to managethe cloud resources, configure the virtualization layer, manage customeraccounts, and perform other cloud administration tasks. The managementserver 410 also may include a set of APIs and/or one or more customerconsole applications with user interfaces configured to receive cloudcomputing requests from end users via client computers 411-414, forexample, requests to create, modify, or destroy virtual machines withinthe cloud. Client computers 411-414 may connect to management server 410via the Internet or some other communication network, and may requestaccess to one or more of the computing resources managed by managementserver 410. In response to client requests, the management server 410may include a resource manager configured to select and provisionphysical resources in the hardware layer of the cloud system based onthe client requests. For example, the management server 410 andadditional components of the cloud system may be configured toprovision, create, and manage virtual machines and their operatingenvironments (e.g., hypervisors, storage resources, services offered bythe network elements, etc.) for customers at client computers 411-414,over a network (e.g., the Internet), providing customers withcomputational resources, data storage services, networking capabilities,and computer platform and application support. Cloud systems also may beconfigured to provide various specific services, including securitysystems, development environments, user interfaces, and the like.

Certain clients 411-414 may be related, for example, to different clientcomputers creating virtual machines on behalf of the same end user, ordifferent users affiliated with the same company or organization. Inother examples, certain clients 411-414 may be unrelated, such as usersaffiliated with different companies or organizations. For unrelatedclients, information on the virtual machines or storage of any one usermay be hidden from other users.

Referring now to the physical hardware layer of a cloud computingenvironment, availability zones 401-402 (or zones) may refer to acollocated set of physical computing resources. Zones may begeographically separated from other zones in the overall cloud ofcomputing resources. For example, zone 401 may be a first clouddatacenter located in California, and zone 402 may be a second clouddatacenter located in Florida. Management server 410 may be located atone of the availability zones, or at a separate location. Each zone mayinclude an internal network that interfaces with devices that areoutside of the zone, such as the management server 410, through agateway. End users of the cloud (e.g., clients 411-414) might or mightnot be aware of the distinctions between zones. For example, an end usermay request the creation of a virtual machine having a specified amountof memory, processing power, and network capabilities. The managementserver 410 may respond to the user's request and may allocate theresources to create the virtual machine without the user knowing whetherthe virtual machine was created using resources from zone 401 or zone402. In other examples, the cloud system may allow end users to requestthat virtual machines (or other cloud resources) are allocated in aspecific zone or on specific resources 403-405 within a zone.

In this example, each zone 401-402 may include an arrangement of variousphysical hardware components (or computing resources) 403-405, forexample, physical hosting resources (or processing resources), physicalnetwork resources, physical storage resources, switches, and additionalhardware resources that may be used to provide cloud computing servicesto customers. The physical hosting resources in a cloud zone 401-402 mayinclude one or more computer servers 403, such as the virtualizationservers 301 described above, which may be configured to create and hostvirtual machine instances. The physical network resources in a cloudzone 401 or 402 may include one or more network elements 405 (e.g.,network service providers) comprising hardware and/or softwareconfigured to provide a network service to cloud customers, such asfirewalls, network address translators, load balancers, virtual privatenetwork (VPN) gateways, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)routers, and the like. The storage resources in the cloud zone 401-402may include storage disks (e.g., solid state drives (SSDs), magnetichard disks, etc.) and other storage devices.

The example cloud computing environment shown in FIG. 4 also may includea virtualization layer (e.g., as shown in FIGS. 1-3) with additionalhardware and/or software resources configured to create and managevirtual machines and provide other services to customers using thephysical resources in the cloud. The virtualization layer may includehypervisors, as described above in FIG. 3, along with other componentsto provide network virtualizations, storage virtualizations, etc. Thevirtualization layer may be as a separate layer from the physicalresource layer, or may share some or all of the same hardware and/orsoftware resources with the physical resource layer. For example, thevirtualization layer may include a hypervisor installed in each of thevirtualization servers 403 with the physical computing resources. Knowncloud systems may alternatively be used, e.g., WINDOWS AZURE (MicrosoftCorporation of Redmond, Wash.), AMAZON EC2 (Amazon.com Inc. of Seattle,Wash.), IBM BLUE CLOUD (IBM Corporation of Armonk, N.Y.), or others.

Unified Notification Framework

FIG. 5 depicts an illustrative unified application notificationframework. In some embodiments, a unified application notificationenvironment 500 may include a unified application notification framework501 that collects notifications from a virtual machine 502 and relay allor part of the notifications to a client device 503. Specifically, thenotifications may be issued by an application 504 executing on thevirtual machine 502 and be forwarded to the workspace of the clientdevice 503 such that a user 506 of the client device 503 may benotified. The virtual machine 502 may be, for example, one of virtualmachines 332 of FIG. 3. The client device 503 may be one of networknodes 103, 105, 107, 109 of FIG. 1 or terminals 240 of FIG. 2. Theclient device 503 may have a workspace environment (also referred to asa workspace or a virtual environment) that allows the user 506 to accessthe virtual machine 502, an operating system 505, and/or the application504. Throughout this disclosure, the client device 503 may refer tohardware (e.g., a physical device such as a desktop computer, a mobiledevice, etc.) and/or any software (e.g., workspace environment) thatruns on the hardware. The workspace may be a web interface, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, etc. Although the application 504and/or the operating system 505 running on the virtual machine 502 maybe able to send notifications directly to the client device 503 when theclient device 503 is online and connected to the virtual machine 502(e.g., engaged in a remote session), such direct delivery ofnotifications may be unavailable to the application 504 and theoperating system 505 when the client device 503 is offline or otherwiseunavailable for communication with the application 504 or the operatingsystem 505. In such a case, the unified application notificationframework 501 may receive or intercept notifications associated with theapplication 504 and forward those messages to the client device 503 inreal time or at a later time.

The unified application notification framework 501 may be a collectionof software and/or hardware components that enables the client device503 to receive notifications associated with the application 504 evenwhen the client device 503 is not actively communicating with theapplication 504 and/or the virtual machine 502. For example, all or partof the unified application notification framework 501 may be running onserver(s) 206 of FIG. 2 or client machine(s) 240. Although FIG. 5illustrates the unified application notification framework 501 asreceiving notifications from a single virtual instance and forwardingthe notifications to a single client device 503 for simplicity ofillustration, the unified application notification framework 501 mayreceive notifications from multiple virtual machines and forward thenotifications to multiple corresponding client devices. For clarity ofillustration, it will be assumed in this disclosure that the unifiedapplication notification framework 501 is included in hypervisor 302 ofFIG. 3. However, in some embodiments, all or part of the unifiedapplication notification framework 501 may be included in hypervisor302, operating system 314, control program 320, and/or guest operatingsystem 330 of FIG. 3. In other embodiments, the unified applicationnotification framework 501 may be part of an entity (e.g., a server)that is logically and/or physically separate from client machine(s) 240,server(s) 206, and virtualization server 301. For example, the unifiedapplication notification framework 501 may reside in management server410 or other devices.

The unified application notification framework 501 may have at leastthree communication channels (also referred to as notification channels)through which it receives notifications from the virtual machine 502.These communication channels may include a notification API 507,operating system-level notification interception 508, andservice-to-service notification 509. These may be independentnotification channels, by which various types of notifications may beretrieved and collected. Regardless of which communication channel orpath is used for delivery, the notification may be delivered to theunified application notification framework 501 via a network 512 (e.g.,the Internet). For example, the application 504 may make a nativenotification API call (i.e., the notification API 507) and send thenotification over the Internet, a wireless broadband communicationnetwork, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), avirtual network, etc. In some embodiments, one or more of thecommunication channels 507, 508, 509 may not need to traverse thenetwork 512 as when, for example, the virtual machine 502 and theunified application notification framework 501 are located within thesame physical server.

The unified application notification framework 501 may further includenotification filtering and scheduling module 510 that further processesthe received notifications before forwarding them to the client device503. In particular, a notification filtering and scheduling module 510may triage and filter messages in accordance with policies orpreferences. The policies or preferences may be predetermined (e.g., byan administrator or user) or dynamically updated. For example, afiltering policy may dictate that any redundant or repetitive messagemay be discarded and prevented from being forwarded to the client device503. The filtering policy may, for instance, be updated according tomessage history (e.g., blocking certain types of repeated messages) oruser preference (e.g., whitelisting all messages originating from acertain application). The notification filtering and scheduling module510 may also decide to forward one or more notifications to the clientdevice 503 sometime later than the time at which the notifications arereceived at the unified application notification framework 501. In otherwords, the unified application notification framework 501 may, accordingto a policy or setting, schedule or reschedule delivery of notificationsto the client device 503. For example, when a notification arrives atthe unified application notification framework 501 at a time when theuser 506 is unavailable to see the notification, the notificationfiltering and scheduling module 510 may schedule the delivery of themessage for a future time when the user 506 will be available. Asanother example, when the client device 503 is powered off, offline, orotherwise unavailable to receive notifications (e.g., when the unifiednotification framework 501 fails to receive a notification receiptacknowledgement message back from the client device 503), the unifiedapplication notification framework 501 may reschedule the delivery for afuture time to retry.

Some notifications may be received via the notification API 507. Thenotification API notification channel 507 may be based on an API that isnative to the unified application notification framework 501, and thusmay also be referred to as native notification API. An API refers to aset of functions, methods, procedures, subroutines, definitions,protocols, and/or data that are designed to allow an application,operating system, service, etc. access to features or data of the sameor other application, operating system, service, etc. The native API(also referred to as a proprietary API) of the unified applicationnotification framework 501 may be an API that is written or designedspecifically for accessing features of the unified applicationnotification framework 501. The application 504 that is designed to takeadvantage of this native API (e.g., the API is integrated into theapplication 504) may make an appropriate API call for issuing anotification (e.g., SendNotif( )) to send a notification messagedirectly to the unified application notification framework 501.

Other notifications may be received via operating system-levelnotification interception 508. Operating system-level notificationinterception 508 may rely on a notification API that is integrated intothe operating system 505 to intercept any operating system-levelnotifications being sent from the application 504 to the operatingsystem 505. The operating system 505 may be a virtual operating systeminstance such as the guest operating system 330 of FIG. 3. Thenotification API integrated into the operating system 505 (also referredto as an OS-level notification API) may be a part of the API provided bythe operating system 505 that allows applications running on theoperating system 505 to initiate a call and send a notification to theoperating system 505. For example, a calendar application may notify theoperating system 505 that a calendar event is imminent, or an instantmessaging (IM) application may notify the operating system 505 of anincoming IM request from another user. In another example, a navigationapplication may notify and request permission from the operating system505 to receive global positioning system (GPS) signals. Examples ofoperating system-level notification APIs include toast/tile/badgenotification APIs in Windows operating system manufactured by MicrosoftCorporation of Redmond, Wash., and libnotify library in Linux operatingsystem.

The operating system-level notification may be intercepted by means of anotification interception layer 513. The notification interception layer513 may be an application, a program, a service, a background process,and/or a foreground process that is tasked with monitoring for any OSAPI calls made by applications running on the operating system 505, andintercept or peek at those API calls for further processing. Processingthe API calls may include creating a shadow notification of the originalAPI call made by an application and/or forwarding the original to theoperating system 505. The notification interception layer 513 may beimplemented into the virtual machine 502 between the application 504 andthe operating system 505 (e.g., OS notification APIs). Alternatively,the notification interception layer 513 may be a part of the operatingsystem 505. In some other embodiments, the notification interceptionlayer 513 may be included in the unified application notificationframework 501. Each time the notification API is called by theapplication 504, a shadow notification, which is identical orsubstantially similar in content to the original notification call, maybe generated by the notification interception layer 513 and sent to theunified application notification framework 501. The shadow notificationmay conform to the notification API native to the unified applicationnotification framework 501 (which may be distinct from the OS-levelnotification API of the operating system 505) as discussed above inreference to the native notification API notification channel 507. Forexample, the shadow notification may be a duplicate copy of the originalnotification call or it may contain only part of the informationincluded in the original notification call. The notificationinterception layer 513 may create shadow notifications for all or onlypart of the OS-level API calls intercepted. For example, thenotification interception layer 513 may be programmed to ignore orfilter out some API calls such as duplicative or repeated calls within acertain period of time. Other API calls may be ignored or filtered outbased on their type, priority, size, etc. Alternatively, instead ofgenerating and sending the shadow notification to the unifiedapplication notification framework 501, the notification interceptionlayer 513 may intercept the original API call from the application 504and forward the original API call to the unified applicationnotification framework 501.

Still other notifications may be received via service-to-servicenotification channel 509. Service-to-service notification channel 509refers to a communication channel for delivering notification messagesfrom one service (e.g., a backend service) to another service (e.g., theunified application notification framework 501). Service-to-servicenotification 509 may rely on a backend service 511 (also referred to asa backing service) to send notifications directly to the unifiedapplication notification framework 501. In particular, applicationnotifications may be generated and pushed by one or more backendservices associated with the application. For example, the backendservice 511 may be a mail server that pushes a message or notificationto the application 504 (e.g., email client), which would then send itsown notification message to the operating system 505. However, theunified application notification framework 501 may expose its interface(e.g., service-to-service notification channel 509) to the backendservice 511 such that the backend service 511 can send notificationsdirectly to the unified application notification framework 501. Thebackend service 511 may be a service provider (e.g., a third-partyserver) that provides services to the client device 503, the application504, the operating system 505, and/or the virtual machine 502. Thus, thebackend service 511 may consist of various hardware and/or softwarecomponents, and may include, for example, a web server, a mail server,an application server, a messaging server, a location server, a contentprovider, an online streaming service, a social media service, afinancial institute, a telecommunications service, an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, etc. thatrender services to the application 504. The backend service 511 may sendout separate and possibly duplicate notifications to both theapplication 504 and the unified application notification framework 501,either simultaneously or in series. Alternatively, instead of thebackend service 511 sending a notification message directly to theunified application notification framework 501, the virtual machine 502may forward any notification messages, which were sent by the backendservice 511, to the unified application notification framework 501. Aservice-to-service notification message may be sent via the network 512,such as the Internet. Since the backend service 511 is not part of thevirtual machine 502, notifications that originate from the backendservice 511 may be received by the unified application notificationframework 501 even when the virtual machine 502 is offline or otherunavailable for communication. For example, the backend service 511 suchas a social media service, which has integrated the native API of theunified application notification framework 501, may send a friendrequest notification to the unified application notification framework501, even when the virtual machine 502 is offline or out of service. Inother examples, the service-to-service notification message may be a newemail alert from an email server, a new instant message alert from aninstant messaging server, a download complete message from a filetransfer protocol (FTP) server, a deal alert from an online retailer,etc. The unified application notification framework 501 may then forwardthe friend request notification to the client device 503. The unifiedapplication notification framework 501 may also support notificationmulticasting such that applications can easily send notifications to allor a group of users. For example, a notification message through theservice-to-service notification channel 509 may be sent out to multipleusers through an API provided by the backend service 511 for theapplication 504.

The three communication channels (i.e., the notification API 507,operating system-level notification interception 508, andservice-to-service notification 509) may be employed separately orconcurrently. Even though the three communication channels illustratedherein may be logically distinct from each other, two or more of thesecommunication channels may be physically combined into one communicationchannel. For example, the notification API call 507 and the OS-levelinterception 508 may share the same physical communication channelbetween the virtual machine 502 and the unified application notificationframework 501. The notification API 507 and service-to-servicenotification 509 communication channels may require a third-party (e.g.,application developer, backend service provider, etc.) to integratespecific code or instructions (e.g., native API for the unifiedapplication notification framework 501) while operating system-levelnotification interception 508 may pose no such requirements. Inaddition, the notification API 507 and operating system-levelnotification interception 508 communication channels may require thatthe application 504 be running (e.g., in background), whileservice-to-service notification 509 communication channel may beoperable even when the application 504 and/or the virtual machine 502are shut down because the service-to-service notification 509 originatesfrom the backend service 511 that typically operates independently fromthe virtual machine 502. For example, when the backend service 511 suchas an email server receives a new email for the user 506, the emailserver can send a new email alert message directly to the unifiedapplication notification framework 501 through service-to-servicenotification channel 509, and ultimately to the client device 503 evenif the virtual machine 502 is offline or inoperable. Furthermore, when anotification associated with the application 504 is received from thebackend service 511 via service-to-service notification channel 509 butthe application 504 is not currently running on the virtual machine 502,the unified application notification framework 501 may cause theapplication 504 to run (e.g., sending a message or command to thevirtual machine 502 to launch the application 504) on the virtualmachine 502 (e.g., running as a background process) in order toaccelerate user access. For example, when the user 506 receives a newemail alert message at the client device 503 from the backend service511 via the unified application notification framework 501 (i.e.,service-to-service notification 509), the unified applicationnotification framework 501 may preemptively launch the application 504within the virtual machine 502 such that when the user 506 access thevirtual machine 504 via the workspace in the client device 503, theapplication 504 would already be up and running in the virtual machine502 and ready to display the new email, instead of the user 506 havingto manually launch the application 504. Similarly, in response to thenotification unified application notification framework 501 receiving anotification associated with the application 504 from the backendservice 511 via the service-to-service notification channel 509, theunified application notification framework 501 may also cause theoperating system 505 and/or the virtual machine 502 to run if they arenot already running In particular, the unified application notificationframework 501 may first determine whether the operating system 505and/or the virtual machine 502 is currently operational (e.g., running,online, powered on, etc.), and if not, then cause the operating system505 and/or the virtual machine 502 to be operational. This may beaccomplished by transmitting, to the virtual machine 502 or a hypervisorassociated with the virtual machine 502, a specific message or command(e.g., a data packet) that triggers the launch of the operating system505 and/or the virtual machine 502. Such message or command may be sentvia one of the three aforementioned communication channels or via acommunication channel that is separate from the aforementionedcommunication channels.

FIG. 6 depicts an illustrative user interface (UI) for a client devicereceiving notifications according to one or more aspects describedherein. The client device may be, for example, the client device 503 ofFIG. 5. The user of the client device may access a user interface, suchas a workspace environment 600 (also referred to as a client workspaceor a virtual environment) on the client device, to access one or morevirtual machines, such as the virtual machine 502 of FIG. 5. Clientworkspace may be the frontend through which users can interact withvirtual applications. The workspace environment 600 may be, for example,a web interface rendered in a web browser, a mobile app running on amobile device, a desktop application running on a PC, a moduleintegrated to an operating system of the client device (e.g., integratedto Windows File Explorer or macOS Finder). The workspace environment 600may be part of a stand-alone application or a client application thatcommunicates with a server. Specifically, the workspace environment 600may be provided to the client device by a server, such as managementserver 410 of FIG. 4.

The user of the client device may interact with the workspaceenvironment 600 to access a remote desktop (e.g., the operating system505), a virtual application (e.g., the application 504), etc. In anexample embodiment shown in FIG. 6, the workspace environment 600 mayallow a user (e.g., “John Smith”) to sign in and access one of UIelements (e.g., icons) that represent virtual desktop environments 601A,601B, 601C (generally 601). For example, the virtual desktop 601A may bea virtual instance of Windows 10 operating system, the virtual desktop601B may be a virtual instance of macOS operating system, and thevirtual desktop 601C may be a virtual instance of Linux operatingsystem. Thus, when the user selects, for example, the virtual desktop601A on the workspace environment 600, a remote desktop graphical userinterface (GUI) for the virtual instance of Windows 10 operating system,running on a remotely located computing device, may be launched anddisplayed on the client device.

Additionally, the workspace environment 600 may also include UI elements(e.g., icons) that represent virtual applications 602A, 602B (generally602). For example, the virtual application 602A may be an emailapplication running on a virtual machine (e.g., the virtual machine 502)provided by a remotely located computing device (e.g., server 206). Inother examples, the virtual application 602B may be a calendarapplication. The virtual application 602A and the virtual application602B may be running on the same or separate virtual machines. Thus, whenthe user selects, for example, the virtual application 602A on theworkspace environment 600, the client device may display outputgenerated by the corresponding virtual instance of email applicationexecuting on a remotely located computing device (e.g., server 206).

The workspace environment 600 may receive notifications from a unifiedapplication notification framework, such as the unified applicationnotification framework 501 of FIG. 1. The notifications may haveoriginated from an application, an operating system instance, or abackend service depending on which one of the three communicationchannels enumerated above was used for notification delivery. Once thenotifications are received by the workspace environment 600, theworkspace environment 600 may present the notifications to the user. Forexample, the notifications may be displayed visually (e.g., text, anicon, a pop-up, a dialog box, a status bar, a toast, a tile, a badge, analert, a counter, etc.) or played audibly (e.g., an alarm, a ringtone,an audio alert, etc.). In the example embodiment shown in FIG. 6, thenotifications are presented as badges 603A, 603B, 603C, 603D (generally603) and a status bar 604.

The badges 603A, 603B, 603C, 603D may each indicate the number ofnotifications that have been received, from respective virtual desktopsand virtual applications, but not cleared. Thus, for example, the badge603A may indicate that there are currently two pending notificationsfrom the virtual desktop 601A. These notifications may have originatedfrom the virtual desktop 601A (i.e., virtual instance of operatingsystem) itself or from any one of the applications running on thevirtual desktop 601A. In another example, the badge 603B may indicatethat there are currently 29 pending (i.e., uncleared) notifications fromthe virtual application 602A. Specifically, these notifications mayrepresent 29 new unread email messages. Further, the lack ofnotification badge associated with the virtual desktop 601B may indicatethat there are no notifications that were received in association withthe virtual desktop 601B or that all of its notifications have beencleared. Finally, the workspace environment 600 may display a globalnotification message such as through the status bar 604.

Although badges 603 are used in the example embodiment illustrated inFIG. 6, other methods may be used to indicate the presence or lack ofnotifications with regard to the virtual desktop environments 601 and/orthe virtual applications 602. For example, icons representing thevirtual desktop environments 601 and/or virtual applications 602 may behighlighted, tinted, shaded, animated, enlarged, reduced, etc. toindicate the presence or lack of a pending (i.e., uncleared)notification. The icons may be visually altered in different mannersdepending on the number of notifications and/or priority ofnotifications. For example, an icon with a normal priority levelnotification may be displayed with a green badge while another icon witha high priority level notification may be displayed with a red badge.The badges 603 may be located on top, bottom, left, right, etc. of theicons or over the icons. Additionally, the icons may be automaticallyrearranged based on the notifications. For example, an icon with thehighest notification count may be placed at a position that is mostnoticeable to the user, such as the top left position on the first page,and the remaining icons may be arranged in a descending order. In someexample embodiments, when the user selects an icon with a notification,the content of the notification message may be displayed on the screen.In some example embodiments, when a mouse pointer hovers over an iconwith a notification or a long touch input (i.e., touch and hold) isreceived over the icon, a preview of the notification message (e.g., apartial message) may be displayed.

Having disclosed some basic system components and concepts, thedisclosure now turns to the example method embodiments shown in FIGS. 7and 8. For the sake of clarity, the methods are described in terms ofthe unified application notification environment 500 as shown in FIG. 5configured to practice the methods. However, any of the other devices orsystems discussed above, such as computing environment 200,virtualization server 301, cloud computing environment 400, etc., mayalso perform any of the steps disclosed herein. The steps outlinedherein are exemplary and can be implemented in any combination thereof,including combinations that exclude, add, or modify certain steps. Forexample, operations 701, 702, 703 of FIG. 7 may be performed in anyorder or two or more of operations 701, 702, 703 may be performedconcurrently.

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrate method for providing a unified applicationnotification framework. The example method of FIG. 7 may be performed bya unified application notification framework such as the unifiedapplication notification framework 501. First, the unified applicationnotification framework may check if there are any notifications toreceive via one of the communication channels available. Checking forand receiving notifications may be performed either synchronously orasynchronously. The unified application notification framework mayperiodically (e.g., every 1 second, 10 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1hour, etc.) poll to see if there is a pending notification, or thenotification may be pushed to the unified application notificationframework.

The unified application notification framework may determine if there isa notification to be received via the notification API channel (701). Ifthere is one or more notification to be received, then the methodproceeds to operation 704. If not, the unified application notificationframework may determine if there is a notification to be received viathe operating system-level interception channel (702). If there is oneor more notification to be received, then the method proceeds tooperation 704. If not, the unified application notification frameworkmay determine if there is a notification to be received via theservice-to-service notification channel (703). If there is one or morenotification to be received, then the method returns to operation 701,and the unified application notification framework continues to monitorfor pending notifications.

At operation 704, the unified application notification framework mayreceive, via one of a plurality of communication channels, anotification associated with a virtual application. The plurality ofcommunication channels may include the native notification API channel,the operating system-level notification interception channel, and/or theservice-to-service notification channel.

For the unified application notification framework to receive thenotification via the native notification API channel, the virtualapplication may need to request an API call. For example, when theapplication encounters a certain event (e.g., a new email received, anew instant message received, download complete, a critical error,etc.), the application may make a call (e.g., SendNotif( )) according tothe API provided by the unified application notification framework.Then, an appropriate notification message (e.g., a data packet) may betransmitted from the application to the unified application notificationframework according to the API. The notification message may betransmitted via a network such as the Internet.

When the notification is received via the operating system-levelnotification interception channel, the notification is received from avirtual operating system, on which the virtual application is executing.The notification may be generated based on a virtual notification sentby the virtual application to the virtual operating system. The virtualnotification refers to an operating system-level notification message(e.g., Windows toast/tile/badge APIs, Linux libnotify library) that isgenerated by a virtual application to a virtual operating system. Thenotification (e.g., a shadow notification) may be generated by anotification interception layer (e.g., an application, a service, and/ora process executing on the virtual operating system and/or the virtualmachine) after intercepting the virtual notification.

When the notification is received via the service-to-servicenotification channel, the notification may be received from a backendservice (e.g., a third-party server such as a web server, an emailserver, a content server, etc.) that services the virtual application.

The unified application notification framework may determine anidentifier (ID) for the received notification. The identifier mayindicate the virtual application associated with the notification and/orthe backend service. For example, the identifier may be an alphanumericstring that uniquely identifies the application within a certainnamespace. The identifier may be inserted into the notification by thesender (e.g., application, notification interception layer, backendservice, etc.) and extracted by the unified application notificationframework. The unified application notification framework may store thereceived identifier in a database that stores associations betweenidentifiers and applications. This database may be used later to, forexample, identify duplicate notifications originating from the sameapplication.

The unified application notification framework may filter the receivednotification (705). In other words, the received notifications may betriaged and notifications that do not satisfy certain conditions orthresholds may be filtered out. For example, after a notificationassociated with a virtual application is received, via one of theplurality of communication channels, the unified applicationnotification framework may determine whether the notification satisfiesa filtering criterion. The filtering criterion may include anotification type (e.g., toast, badge, pop-up, etc.), a communicationchannel type (e.g., notification API, operating system-levelinterception, service-to-service notification, etc.), an applicationtype (e.g., an email client, an instant messenger, calendar app, etc.),time (e.g., time or receipt), priority (e.g., high priority, normalpriority, low priority, etc.), and/or duplication (e.g., whetherduplicate or similar notification has already been received recently).The notification may be discarded and thus not sent to a clientworkspace if the notification does not satisfy the filtering criterion.The filtering process may be performed based on the identifier includedin the received notification.

The unified application notification framework may then send thereceived notification to a client workspace (706). The client workspacemay be a web client, an application, a service, and/or an operatingsystem. The unified application notification framework may also sendother relevant information, such as the application identifier (ID)corresponding to the virtual application, a notification type (e.g.,toast, badge, pop-up, etc.), a timestamp, notification priorityinformation, etc. The additional information to be sent may bedetermined based on the communication channel type by which thenotification was received. Alternative to sending the notification tothe client workspace right away, the unified application notificationframework may schedule the notification to be sent to the clientworkspace at a specific time (e.g., at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, 12 hourslater, etc.). Once the notification is received at the client workspace,the workspace may display the notification (707). For example, thenotification may be displayed as text, a pop-up, a dialog box, a statusbar update, a badge, a toast, an icon, a tile, an alert, a counter, etc.The notification may be displayed partially (e.g., as a summary) or infull.

If the notification had been received via the service-to-servicenotification channel (708), then the unified application notificationframework may launch the virtual application (709). In other words, theunified application notification framework may cause the virtualapplication to execute as a foreground or background process if it isnot already running, in order to accelerate user access of theapplication. The unified application notification framework may firstdetermine whether the virtual application is already executing on thevirtual machine, and cause the virtual application to launch only whenthe virtual application is not executing. In addition, other appropriateactions by the virtual machine, the operating system, and/or theapplication may be triggered by the unified application notificationframework when the service-to-service notification message is received,such as downloading a file, terminating an application, launching arelated application, etc. For example, if a new update for a desktopapplication is available from a file server, the server may send aservice-to-service notification to the client device via the unifiedapplication notification framework. At this time, the unifiedapplication framework may also cause the desktop application to belaunched on the virtual machine so that the update the application maybe downloaded and/or installed even before the user reacts to thenotification. If the notification was not received via theservice-to-service notification channel, then the method proceeds tooperation 710.

The unified application notification framework may determine whether theclient workspace has sent a receipt acknowledgement in response to thenotification sent (710). If sending the notification to the clientworkspace fails (e.g., the receipt acknowledgement is not receivedwithin a threshold time limit), then the notification may be saved(e.g., at the unified application notification framework) and a retrymechanism may be applied. For example, the notification may be resentimmediately (706) or it may be scheduled to be resent to the clientworkspace at a later time. If the receipt acknowledgement is receivedfrom the client workspace within the threshold time limit, however, theunified application notification framework may mark the notification ascleared and also delete the notification from the unified applicationnotification framework. Alternatively, the notification may be marked ascleared and deleted only after the notification has been acknowledged bythe user of the client workspace.

FIG. 8 depicts an illustrative method for receiving a notification by aclient workspace. The example method of FIG. 8 may be performed by aclient workspace such as the client device 503. The client workspace mayreceive a notification from a unified application notificationframework, such as the unified application notification framework 501 ofFIG. 5 (801). The client workspace may send a receipt acknowledgementback to the unified application notification framework. The clientworkspace may extract the application ID included in the notification(802) to confirm whether the application ID matches one of theapplications that are associated with the client workspace. If theapplication ID does not match, then the client workspace may discard thenotification without further processing it. Thus, the method may returnto operation 801 to monitor for any other notifications.

If a match is found with the application ID, then the client workspacemay present the notification to the user (803). For example, the clientworkspace may display the notification message and/or play an alertsound as explained above. Optionally, the notification message may beencrypted by the unified application notification framework anddecrypted by the client workspace for increased security. In particular,the encryption/decryption may be performed via symmetric or asymmetriccryptography. For example, the unified application may encrypt thenotification message with the client's public key prior to transmission,and the client may decrypt the received notification message with itsprivate key. At operation 804, the client workspace may then determinewhether the notification has been acknowledged by the user (e.g., withina threshold time limit). The user may acknowledge the notification by,for example, dismissing the displayed notification message by clickingon it and/or accessing the virtual application associated with thenotification. Alternatively, the notification may be automaticallyacknowledged without the user's intervention. If the notification is notacknowledged by the user, then the client workspace may continue to waitfor its acknowledgement. However, once the notification is successfullyacknowledged, the notification may be cleared from the client workspace(805). The client workspace may clear the notification by calling anoperating system notification API for the virtual operating system,calling a native notification API for the unified applicationnotification framework, and/or notifying the backend service, whichwould then call the native notification API. The unified applicationnotification framework may then mark the notification as cleared. Once amessage is cleared, the unified application notification framework wouldno longer try to deliver or redeliver the message to the clientworkspace.

Although the subject matter has been described in language specific tostructural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understoodthat the subject matter defined in the appended claims is notnecessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above.Rather, the specific features and acts described above are described asexample implementations of the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving, by a server, anotification from a service provider associated with an applicationexecutable on a virtual machine; sending, by the server while theapplication is not executing on the virtual machine, the notification toa client device; and after sending the notification, causing theapplication to execute on the virtual machine.
 2. The method of claim 1,wherein the service provider comprises a backend service that servicesthe application.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the service provideris at least one of a web server, a mail server, an application server, amessaging server, a location server, a content provider, an onlinestreaming service, a social media service, a financial institute, atelecommunications service, an Internet service provider, or asoftware-as-a-service provider.
 4. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising displaying, by the client device, the notification for auser.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:after receiving the notification, causing, by the server, the virtualmachine to perform at least one of downloading a file, terminating theapplication, or launching a related application that is related to theapplication.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method furthercomprises: scheduling the notification to be provided to the clientdevice at a specific time.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the methodfurther comprises: receiving, by the server, a second notification fromthe service provider; determining that the second notification does notsatisfy a filtering criterion; and discarding, by the server, the secondnotification without providing the second notification to the clientdevice.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the filtering criterioncomprises at least one of a notification type, a communication channeltype, an application type, time, priority, or duplication.
 9. Anapparatus comprising: one or more processors; and memory storinginstructions that, when executed by the one or more processors; causethe one or more processors to: receive a notification from a serviceprovider associated with an application executable on a virtual machine;send, while the application is not executing on the virtual machine, thenotification to a client device; and after sending the notification,cause the application to execute on the virtual machine.
 10. Theapparatus of claim 9, wherein the service provider comprises a backendservice that services the application.
 11. The apparatus of claim 9,wherein the service provider is at least one of a web server, a mailserver, an application server, a messaging server, a location server, acontent provider, an online streaming service, a social media service, afinancial institute, a telecommunications service, an Internet serviceprovider, or a software-as-a-service provider.
 12. The apparatus ofclaim 9, wherein the client device is configured to display thenotification for a user.
 13. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein theinstructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further causethe apparatus to: after receiving the notification, cause the virtualmachine to perform at least one of downloading a file, terminating theapplication, or launching a related application that is related to theapplication.
 14. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the instructions,when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the apparatusto: schedule the notification to be provided to the client device at aspecific time.
 15. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the instructions,when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the apparatusto: receive a second notification from the service provider; determinethat the second notification does not satisfy a filtering criterion; anddiscard the second notification without providing the secondnotification to the client device.
 16. The apparatus of claim 15,wherein the filtering criterion comprises at least one of a notificationtype, a communication channel type, an application type, time, priority,or duplication.
 17. A method comprising: receiving, by a server, anotification from a notification interceptor of a virtual machine,wherein the notification is associated with an application executable onthe virtual machine; and sending, by the server, the notification to avirtual environment.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein thenotification interceptor comprises at least one of an application, aprogram, a service, a background process, or a foreground process. 19.The method of claim 17, wherein the notification interceptor isconfigured to detect an operating system (OS) application programminginterface (API) call and send the OS API call to the server.